How to Relieve Baby Gas: What Works and What Does Not

Most baby gas is not a problem to fix. It is a sign of a normal, still-maturing digestive system, and it passes on its own. The good news is that the measures that genuinely help, burping, positioning, and slowing feeds, are simple and free. The less good news is that most of the products sold for gas do not beat a dummy treatment.

This guide covers what to actually do when your baby is squirmy and gassy, which popular remedies the evidence does not support, and the vomiting and stool changes that mean it is not just gas.

Why Babies Are So Gassy

Before the fixes, the reassurance: gas is normal. Newborns have immature digestive systems, they swallow air while feeding and crying, and their guts are learning to move things along. The result is a lot of gas, a lot of squirming, and a lot of worried parents. In most cases nothing is wrong.¹

Gas tends to peak in the first few months and ease as your baby’s system matures, on a similar timeline to normal fussiness. It is easy to blame gas for evening crying, and the two often coincide, but as our colic guide explains, gas is usually a companion to the crying, not the sole cause.

What Actually Helps

Relieving baby gas: what to try

Simple, free, and low-risk

1

Burp during and after feeds

Pause partway through a feed and again at the end to bring up swallowed air.

2

Hold upright after feeding

Keep your baby upright for 10 to 20 minutes after a feed to let gas rise and escape.

3

Tummy time while awake

Supervised tummy time gently pressures the belly and can help move gas along.

4

Gentle bicycle legs

With your baby on their back, cycle the legs slowly toward the belly.

5

Slow the feed down

Pace bottle feeds and check the nipple flow so your baby swallows less air in the first place.

6

Check the latch or bottle angle

A poor latch or a too-fast bottle means more swallowed air. Adjust to reduce it.

Slowing the feed is often the highest-leverage change, because less swallowed air means less gas to deal with afterward. Our guide to paced bottle feeding walks through the technique, and how to burp a baby covers the positions that work best.

Gas on Top of Already Hard Nights

Gassy evenings arrive on top of a baseline that is already broken for most families. In our State of Baby Sleep 2026 report, based on 74,379 parents across 112 countries, night waking is heavy right when gas tends to peak.

Babies waking 3 or more times a night, by age

The gassy newborn months overlap the hardest nights

0 to 3 mo

48.8%

4 to 6 mo

64.7%

7 to 9 mo

66.7%

10 to 12 mo

59.7%

13 to 18 mo

52.4%

19 to 24 mo

40.2%

2 to 6 yr

31.4%

48.8 percent of babies aged 0 to 3 months woke three or more times a night, and 46.4 percent of parents described themselves as exhausted. We say this because exhaustion is when the pricey drops start to look worth it. The free, physical measures are still the ones with the evidence.

What Does Not Work (No Matter What the Box Says)

This is the part the product aisle would rather you skip. The most popular gas remedies do not hold up to testing.

Simethicone, the active ingredient in most gas drops, was compared against placebo in a randomized trial and worked no better than the placebo. Babies improved at the same rate either way.³ A Cochrane review of pain-relieving agents for infant crying found the trials small and low quality with no reliable benefit.⁴

Gripe water and herbal drops are not regulated as medicines and vary in what they contain, and the NHS states plainly that anti-colic drops and herbal supplements are not recommended and there is no good evidence they help.² Probiotics are a partial exception, but a narrow one: the evidence points to a possible benefit in breastfed colicky babies, not in formula-fed ones, and not as a general gas cure.⁵

The honest takeaway is not that you are helpless. It is that the free, physical measures above are your best tools, and that a self-limiting bit of gas rarely needs a product at all.

When Gas Is Not Just Gas

Gas itself is rarely a sign of a real problem, and the way to judge feeding is by output and weight gain, not by how gassy or squirmy your baby seems.⁶ But some symptoms that get lumped in with gas are not gas, and they need a doctor.

If the squirming and gas come with hours of hard-to-soothe evening crying, that pattern may be colic, and if feeds seem to trigger it, revisit how much your newborn is eating and whether feeds are too fast.

Frequently Asked Questions